Stolen Prey

you tell him, there isn’t much time.”
    “I’ll tell him,” Kline promised. “Please don’t do anything.”
    Lucas clicked off and called an attorney named Annie Wolf, who had once been a prosecutor and was still big in the Bar Association, and asked about Jay Keisler.
    “Yeah, used to be an Anoka County public defender,” she said. “Has a general-law practice in Minneapolis. Does some criminal and personal injury.”
    “Good trial lawyer?” Lucas asked.
    “As a trial lawyer, on a scale of one to ten, I’d give him about a seven.”
    “Not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, huh?”
    “It’s not that—it’s that he looks like a fourteen-year-old Albert Einstein, with this fright-wig hair,” Wolf said. “He’s just no damn good with juries. I understand that he is
excellent
in pretrial negotiation, and trial prep. Excellent with insurance companies, where nobody wants to go to trial. When they
do
go to trial, he has an associate, Don Pew, who’ll usually handle it. Pew looks and acts like Jimmy Stewart. Between the two of them, they get the job done.”
    “So, if we’re trying to work a deal, get a guy to turn state’s evidence in return for a reduced charge…”
    “That’s how Jay made his living for a decade or so. He’s done hundreds of them. Be ready for him.”
    “Thanks, Annie.”
    S ATISFIED THAT he’d stampeded Kline, but a little worried about Kline’s choice of attorney, Lucas called the Ramsey County attorney they’d be working with and told him about Keisler.
    “Not the best news, but not the worst,” the prosecutor said. “He’ll wring every inch out of us … but in the end, he’ll deal.”
    “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lucas said. “You’ll be around tomorrow?”
    “All day. Give me a call.”
    Lucas checked with Shaffer, learned that there was nothing new with Martínez or the last shooter, but Shaffer said, “The hunt’s gone viral. Everybody in the country’s looking for her. You see the thing about Brooks, the last hour or so?”
    “No…”
    Lucas was standing in the doorway of Shaffer’s office, and Shaffer leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. Lucas had never seen him do that before; had never seen him look quite as pleased with himself.
    “Sunnie will now be owned by Brooks’s brother, Stan. Stan was the final disaster inheritor in Brooks’s will. You know, one of those provisions that lawyers put into wills in case the whole family dies in a plane crash?”
    “I know about those,” Lucas said. “I got one.”
    “Anyway, he’s also on the company board of directors,” Shaffer said. “He got the board to offer a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for anyone who
spots
Martínez.
Anyone who spots her.
Don’t even have to convict her. Just call the cops on her. It’s like a nationwide Easter-egg hunt with a hundred-thousand-dollar egg. Plus, everybody’s talking about all that gold they think she has.”
    “Easter egg with a Mac-10,” Lucas said. “Hope nobody gets killed.”
    Shaffer pulled his feet down. “Well, yeah…”
    “I wonder if this Stan had anything to do with setting up the fake Bois Brule account? Seems to me that there are going to be a lot of claims on Sunnie. Maybe it’d be better not to get too enthusiastic about Stan’s reward offer.”
    Shaffer rubbed his chin. “You could be right.”
    “We’re still going with the press conference tomorrow? Ten o’clock?” Lucas asked.
    “Still scheduled,” Shaffer said.
    “My daughter Letty works part-time as an intern at Channel Three,” Lucas said. “She said Ralph Richter is coming over. He’sgoing to do his media-asshole thing on us. Don’t worry about it, and don’t let him get under your skin. That’s just his gig, you know? Playing the tough guy.”
    Shaffer suddenly looked worried again.
    His job there done, and not feeling at all guilty, Lucas went back to his own office.
    L OOSE ENDS : He called Virgil Flowers.
    “What’s taking so long?” he asked.
    “I gotta tell you,” Virgil said. “I think I’ve got them spotted. I’m talking to Richie. He’s got a deputy with a big fucking pair of binoculars and a radio, hiding out in an oat field, watching the farm. We think your robbers work out of the place, but there’re ten other people out there. Something’s up. Could be a big meth operation. We’re tracking people coming out of there, running their plates, all kinds of different places, Missouri, Colorado, lot of drug